"Fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists."
--from the dedication page to "It" (1986)

Friday, July 14, 2017

A Review of "Dollar Deal" (by Shawn S. Lealos)

Today, I'll be reviewing the 2015 book Dollar Deal, which is a collection of interviews by author Shawn S. Lealos with various Dollar Baby filmmakers.

What's a Dollar Baby? you might ask. That's an easy enough question to answer. See, Stephen King has had this program since at least the eighties in which he will grant aspiring filmmakers the rights to make a short film based on one of his stories for a single dollar. There's more to it than that (e.g., the filmmakers are not allowed to profit off the films or show them outside of festivals), but that's the gist of the thing.

I've always
been reluctant to integrate fandom for the Dollar Baby films into my
King-fandom regimen.There are several
reasons for this, including:

1.
I don’t consider them to be professional
films.

2.There are a LOT of them, and keeping track of
them seems to be a near impossibility.

3.I have no access to more than a handful of
them.

4.My perception of them is that the vast
majority suck the root.Not sayin’
that’s a stone-cold truism … just sayin’ that that’s my perception.

All those things
being the case, why bother?

Well, that’s easy: because regardless of how I think or feel about them, and
regardless of whether I have any ability to actually view them, these ARE
King-sanctioned films.In that way, an
argument could be made that they are just as legitimate as, say, Cujo.And I aim for comprehensivity in my King fandom, meaning that in a
perfect world, I’d be able to collect every one of these things and give ‘em a look.

Not being able to do so, it is my preference to turn something of a blind
eye toward them.Out of sight, out of
mind, and if they are out of my thoughts, then I don’t have to worry about not
being able to see them.

Yeah, I get it; dude sounds nuts,
you’re thinking.Who told you to think
that?!?Was it the Tall Whites?!?Er…Anyways, don’t misunderstand me; I don’t lose sleep thinking about not
being able to see Dollar Baby films.

Bottom line is: I just don't care about these movies.

So it’s a credit to
Shawn S. Lealos (and the filmmakers profiled in his book) that while reading Dollar
Deal, I did care.

His book is not a definitive history of Dollar Babies – as I mentioned
earlier, there doesn’t seem to be a way to actually compile a comprehensive
list of them – but is instead a collection of interviews with seventeen
filmmakers who have participated in the program (plus three essays).During the course of reading these
interviews, I became interested in the films under discussion, and in the
filmmakers who worked on them.By
definition, these were films made out of a combination of sheer love and sheer
determination, and the can-do attitudes that are the hallmark of a combination
like that are, at times, infectious.Many of these folks have gone on to have solid careers.None are Frank Darabont, but few people in
all of human history have been Frank Darabont, so let’s not hold that against
them.In several cases, they’ve become
industry professionals, and that’s a solid outcome.

The
book’s subjects are as follows:

1.
Frank Darabont – You probably know this,
but Darabont made a Dollar Baby version of “The Woman in the Room” in the early
eighties.Sadly, Lealos was not able to
interview Darabont, so instead he wrote an essay about the man’s career.It includes, obviously, a bit of info about
“The Woman in the Room.”That film, by
the way, remains one of only a quartet of Dollar Babies to be released to the
general public.

2.Jeff Schiro – Schiro’s “The Boogeyman” is the
earliest-known Dollar Baby, and it’s another of the few commercially released
Dollar Babies, having been paired with Darabont’s “The Woman in the Room” for
an eighties VHS release called Stephen
King’s Night Shift Collection.(The
other semi-pro Dollar Babies are Jay Holben’s “Paraonid,” which will come up
later in this book, and the “Children of the Corn” adaptation “Disciples of the
Crow,” which is sadly not profiled here.The latter was paired with a non-King-based film called “The Night
Waiter” and released on a Night Shift
Collection Vol. 2.)Schiro has had a
strong career as an editor on numerous History Channel and Discovery
documentaries, and before he retired as a director he had an opportunity to
direct both a Tales from the Darkside
episode and a Ramones video.

3.Jim Gonis – His Dollar Baby version of “The Lawnmower
Man” was actually adapted from the Marvel Comics adaptation.That comic was scripted by King himself, and
Gonis’s short film was scripted by Michael DeLuca, who would later write the
John Carpenter film In the Mouth of
Madness.As a producer, he’s been
nominated for an Oscar three times (The
Social Network, Moneyball, and Captain Phillips), so he’s doing
okay.Gonis did not remain a filmmaker;
he went to work for Playboy as part
of the model-booking team.That’s one of
the most successful magazines in the history of the world, so good on ya, mate.

4.James Cole – His adaptation of “The Last Rung
on the Ladder” from 1987 is one of the earliest Dollar Babies, and Cole was
able to publish an essay about it in an issue of Castle Rock.

5.“The Good and Bad of Film Adaptation,” Cole’s
essay, is reprinted here.It’s a shame
somebody doesn’t make the Castle Rock
archives available online.Get on that,
StephenKing.com!

6.Jay Holben – As I mentioned earlier, his
short film “Paranoid” (based on the poem from Skeleton Crew) actually achieved a commercial release of
sorts.Not only was it officially
screened on the Internet – and bear in mind this was years and years before
YouTube or other such services.“Paranoid” also appeared on a DVD sampler (along with trailers, music
videos, and other content) inserted in Total
Movie and Entertainment Magazine.I’ve actually got a copy of that, although I’ll be damned if I can
remember how I knew about it.Lilja’s
Library seems like the probable source.

7.Shawn S. Lealos – Lealos himself made a short
film based on “I Know What You Need,” and contributes an essay about that
process.The essay encompasses his love
of Spider-Man, his love of King (The
Stand in particular), his love for being a part of the Dollar Baby
community, and other subjects besides.You can tell he’s passionate on the subject, and he’s contributed a book
about a corner of the King world that is rarely given the spotlight.He also talks about being a member of the
Stephen King Library, so that’s like catnip to me.If I were a cat, that is.You know what I mean – don’t play dumb!

8.Doveed Linder – His version of “Strawberry
Spring” was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, which is more than a lot of
King-based films can claim.

9.Peter Sullivan – Sullivan directed a Dollar
Baby version of “Night Surf,” and has gone on to a successful career as both a
writer and director, primarily of movies like Jersey Shore Shark Attack.Hey, don’t judge; you ain’t never directed a movie starring Cuba Gooding
Jr. or Sean Patrick Flannery, have you?Yeah, me neither.I haven’t done
anything even vaguely as successful as Eve’s
Christmas, which Sullivan directed and turned into a one of the most
successful Lifetime holiday films.He
credits “Night Surf” with helping him get his foot in the door, and says that
Dollar Babies have one advantage over all other short films: the name “Stephen
King.”

10.Robert Cochrane – Cochrane’s Dollar Baby was
“Lucky Quarter.”Now, I have to point
something out here: King’s short story is “Luckey Quarter,” with the
intentional misspelling.It is unclear
to me whether Cochrane’s film is titled similarly (meaning Lealos made an error
here) or whether he himself spelt the title wrong by spelling the word “lucky”
correctly.Cochrane had a different sort
of King experience, as well: he was the winner circa 2003 of the Simon &
Schuster-sponsored “Stephen King American Gunslinger” video contest, and as the
winner got to go to the S&S offices and actually meet King.

11.Nick Wauters – Wauters made a version of
“Rainy Season” and went on to work on television productions like The 4400, The Vampire Diaries, and Eureka.All of this led to his creating a television
series, The Event, that ran on
NBC.

12.James Renner – His Dollar Baby was “All That
You Love Will Be Carried Away, which starred Joe Bob Briggs (!) and Harvey
Pekar (!!).He’s got some good stories
about how that happened.He’s gone on to
write and publish true crime books as well as a couple of novels.

13.James Cox – Cox made a short film based on
“Gray Matter” that starred Tyler Chase, who would later go on to have a
significant role on The Walking Dead.He has since made a feature film, Ctrl Alt Delete, and his “Grey Matter”
(like many of these films) sounds intriguing, despite getting the spelling wrong in the title.

14.Mikhail Tank – Tank has made two Dollar
Babies, based on “My Pretty Pony” and “Willa.”The former stars Paul Marin and the latter is animated.Tank is a musician and performance artist, as
well as a writer and filmmaker.

15.Rodney Altman – Altman adapted “Umney’s Last
Case,” which was, at around the same time, also adapted professionally by TNT
for the Nightmares & Dreamscapes
miniseries.Altman’s contract had been
signed not long before the TNT one was, so he was able to complete his film
without any interference or pushback from the network.Mark Margolis appears in his version, which
sounds like it’s well worth seeing.We’ll likely never know for sure!

16.Juan Pablo Reinoso – His film “Flowers For
Norma” was based on “The Man Who Loved Flowers,” and was made while he was an
NYU student.Thanks for various
connections, he was able to cast actors like Christopher Mulkey, Tony Plana,
and William B. Davis, all of whom you’ve seen in things.Shame on you if you don’t know who Davis is
by name, too!He’s in the original It!

17.Warren Ray – His short “Maxwell Edison” was
also based on “The Man Who Loved Flowers,” and also to a large extent on the
Beatles song “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.”Ray was an alt-country musician (he was in the band Uncle Tupelo) in the
nineties, and sounds like a bit of a character.

18.J.P. Scott – Scott made “Everything’s
Eventual,” which has an interesting distinction among Dollar Babies in that it
is feature-length.Not on purpose, it
just ended up that way.King was
impressed by the movie sufficiently that he gave Scott permission to shop the
movie to distributors for commercial release; but nothing ever came of that,
sadly.I’ve got a very mild personal
connection with this movie in that somebody associated the film – Scott
himself, I think – reached out to me back in the Ramblings Of A Honk Mahfah
(this blog’s original title, in case you didn’t know) days and asked if I’d be
interested in seeing and reviewing the movie.“Uh, YES,” I said, but never received a reply after that.This probably means that somebody figured out
doing that would violate the terms of the Dollar Baby contract, so J.P., if
you’re reading this, I don’t blame you!

19.Derek Simon – Simon, who went on to work for
Howard Stern, made a short film based on “A Very Tight Place.”I hope the amount of poo is minimized; that’s
a rough story, man.Great; but
rough.After working for Stern, Simon
became the assistant to a television creator who came up with a little show
called The Americans.

20.Damon Vinyard – Vinyard’s Dollar Baby was “In
the Deathroom,” which he chose for its small cast and confined location.Smart fella.

All
of this is engaging, and you can tell that not only does Lealos love talking to
these people, but that they love talking to him about the movies and their
careers and Stephen King.

The
book is far from perfect, though, and I can’t end this review without pointing
out that Lealos’s book leaves a lot to be desired from a proofreading
standpoint.Dollar Deal appears to have been self-published, which kind of
makes sense for a book about Dollar Baby films.The book badly needed an editor, though, if only to point out that it is
helpful – if not actually mandatory – to italicize titles of movies, novels,
albums, and such within a text.Can you
follow the writing if no such italicization is used?Sure.But if makes a book seem non-professional, and no book should seem
non-professional, even self-published ones.

Also,
proofreading is a must.I’m never going
to pass up an opportunity to poke a bit of fun at somebody whose book includes
a sentence beginning with the phrase “Personally I am writer first and
foremost.”

ARE
you…?Are you really?

Those
who lives in glass house should avoid chucking rocks, though, so I probably
ought to relax my throwing arm, given the number of typos that appear on my shitty little blogs.

Issues
of prosity aside, Lealos’s book is a lot of fun for anyone who has an interest
in the subject.This, admittedly, is
probably not a huge number of people.But then again, maybe it’s a larger number than you or I might think;
after all, there are a LOT of King fans in the world, and the story of
Darabont’s Dollar Baby origins has been widely told.I suspect the notion of the “Dollar Baby” is
one that is going to continue to be disseminated, and over time, the relative
unavailability of the films may turn them into sought-after myths and
legends.Lealos’s book argues
persuasively that the mere attachment of King’s name made all of these short
films more visible than they would otherwise have been.He’s almost certainly correct about that, and
as such, the continued prominence of that name will give these movies a longer
life by far than they would have had without it.

The same probably
goes for Dollar Deal itself.Lealos has put a good book on a rare subject
into the world; I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it has a longer-than-normal
life, too.

Yeah, same here. Good for them! One of this book's running themes is about how having King's name on a movie -- even a short film -- gets one's foot in the door. I'm sure it didn't work for everyone, but it certainly worked for some of them -- and it's hard not to wonder how much of that is due to King being willing to let his work be used in this way.

This makes me think of my favorite part ever in the Castle Rock newsletter - where someone slammed Darabont's dollar baby and the next issue Darabont wrote in arguing about every complaint the reviewer had. Some of his comments were quite valid as the reviewer panned his movie partially on the quality of VHS tape. In my mind this went back and forth for 4 issues but I may be wrong on that.

It gave me my first glimpse into the Darabont legend of being a great artist but someone who is a bit too bullheaded and "always right" which seems to have caused his Hollywood output to be less than it should be.

As certain news stories of the past day or two have brought to fresh light. (I haven't actually read any of those, by the way; just seen the headlines. Don't want to have him sullied for me in that way.)

Darabont's career does genuinely seem to have run aground, and so thoroughly that I'm not sure I think we'll ever actually see anything else from him.

I'd love to see those Castle Rock pieces, but at the same time, it sounds like Darabont is violating one of the cardinal rules of being an in-the-public-eye artist: you've simply got to have thick skin and accept whatever criticism reviewers fling at you, regardless of whether you agree. Blatant inaccuracies might merit rebuttal, but you've got to leave that for somebody else to do on your behalf; if you can't find a champion in that regard, then your work probably isn't worthwhile, anyways.

I remember when he was announced as the director of the live action Snow White sequel. I knew there was no chance that would happen and sure enough a year later he was gone due to "creative differences". I only saw the first episode of Mob City; looked interesting did you catch that show?

1. I've never seen Darabont's Dollar Baby, but it probably is something worth tracking down.

2. I've actually seen a vid of Schiro's "The Boogeyman" online once. I actually came away liking it.

3. Come to think it of, I believe I've also caught Gonis's "Lawnmower Man". It's short, it's old, but I have to admit it's an improvement over the Pierce Brosnan movie. It actually does kind of have that old "Tales from the Darkside" vibe. Interesting about the film's six degrees relation to "In the Mouth of Madness". I wonder what other King related trivia attaches to that flick.

6. Ditto the Holben piece. It was first brought to my attention in Steve Spignesi's "The Essential Stephen King". What got me interested was the image of the "Man with No Face". Spignesi even wonders if it's meant as a Flagg reference. I don't know, but I do know I came away impressed. The film can be seen here:

11. I'd heard of the Nick Wauters film, in fact I can remember he actually had an official website for it once, but I've never gotten a look at it. I'd like to one day, though.

12. Joe Bob Briggs and Harvey Pekar in a freakin' Dollar Baby! The funny thing is, that role just seems to be right for Pekar, although in real he always seemed made of tougher stuff.

13. I've seen only the trailer for "Gray Matter", yet it does look kind of promising. The trailer can be seen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USR8sq1F-kE

15. Is Rodney Altman related to the more famous Altman? In either case, this is one version of "Unmey" that I didn't know about. I wonder if it has a better ending than the TNT version, one more in line with King's closing sentence: "No one leaves the office early today!" It was the most easiest of endings to film, why not go there? All you'd have to do is focus on the two leads, one of whom is getting strangled to death, while the light around them slowly dim to nothing, then roll the credits.

18. I also heard of and saw the trailer for "Everything's Eventual", and I've heard the same news that King wanted to try and get a legit theatrical release. It's a shame everything fell apart, I'd have liked to have seen a non-studio mandated version of the Low Men. As it stands, it looks like we're going to get a bunch of Ninja Turtles rejects as "official" bill of fare".

1. It's worth seeing, provided you remember that it's an amateur film. Pretty good as far as that goes, but still, a long way from "Shawshank." That's of true of a great many professional films, too, though, isn't it?

12. The story about how he came to be in that movie is pretty funny. Basically, the dude called him because he's never stopped listing his name in the phonebook. He basically said he had zero interest, but his daughter browbeat him into doing it.